


A library is a growing organism

by vass



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Library, Gen, Library Gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27165469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: A brief catalogue.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	A library is a growing organism

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syrupwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/gifts).



> Hi syrupwit. Thank you for being my trickortreat recipient. Your prompts were wonderful.

Item: an 1832 map of rotten boroughs of London, with the library's original location prominently circled and its present location (in one of the disfranchised former boroughs) obscured by mould.

Item: a radio without power cable or batteries, nor indeed solar panels or hand-crank, but with a power switch. When this is switched on, the radio is somehow able to make sounds all the same, yet receives only one station. This is apparently a numbers station, although the numbers in question do not resemble typical code blocks, but rather library call numbers such as "720.942", "158.2", and so on.

Item: a small, brightly coloured comic book featuring Disney characters. The title is 'Kwik, Kwek en Kwak Decimale Classificatie'. The entire text is in Dutch, and smells strongly of what my friend Yaya tells me is kretek.

Item: a CD-ROM, printed with the words Microsoft Encarta 1993. It feels hot to the touch, and is too heavy to lift very far.

Item: a laminated poster with the slogan 'LOSE YOURSELF IN A GOOD BOOK', found on the library floor, half-buried in very fine sand.

Item: a page of lined paper, torn from a spiral-bound notebook. Written on it in biro, in the handwriting of a man born before 1950: "Every book its reader." Underlined so hard as to tear the page. Flat, dry, brown stains. Too dark to be spilled coffee. Pinned to a cork bulletin board behind the information desk.

Item: on the wall opposite the information desk, in what must be a response to the previous item, and in what must be hoped is red paint, the words "SR RANGANATHAN DOESN'T WORK HERE, JURGEN"

Item: a 1957 IBM line printer, printing out a very long file on continuous stationery. The perforated pages fall in a pile which never seems to get any bigger, nor does the printer ever seem to run out of paper. The type is purple, and too faint to read. The printer is not plugged in. The smell of ozone is strongest here.

Item: a wheelchair stairlift, paused just over halfway up the stairs, the platform curled, as if withered, at a 45 degree angle (as no such platform would ever be at that point on the stairs). The safety bars have unbent and are tilted pleadingly toward the iron lace bannisters, which are twisted out of true and tangled like vines. The bars are swaying slightly, back and forward without any sign of ceasing. A slow creak can be heard every time it changes direction. At the top of the stairs (on the first, and top, floor), a sign bearing the symbols for men's, women's, and accessible toilets, and an arrow, pointing up. One of my team shall have to survey that floor for me.

Item: an employee ID badge, on a lanyard made from a black velvet ribbon. The employee appears to be a teenaged boy with dyed black hair and eyeliner. The name and title fields say "Gerard Keay" and "Work Experience" respectively, and underneath both is the line "WEEDING CHAMPION 95".

Item: a CRT monitor displaying a telnet OPAC client in green on black. There is a pronounced lag, such that whatever key you press, the remote computer will apply it to a menu other than the one you were selecting from. Some of the menu selections seem quite unusual.

Item: a tweed scarf draped over the back of an office chair.

Item: another employee ID badge. The name and title are blurred. The woman is thin, grizzled, and severe-looking. She is holding a long, bony finger to her lips in a stereotypical "Shh" gesture. Is she... moving? What is she holding in her other hand?

Item: T.S. Eliot's _The Waste-Land_ , Dover edition, the spine bent open to the last page, where, marked in yellow highlighter, can be read the words "These fragments I have shored against my ruins."

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to kaberett for beta-reading and advice on wheelchair stairlift horror.


End file.
